September 09, 2005

Hillary meets with the little people evacuees in Houston in full Campaign 2008 Bush-bashing mode, fantasizing a flawless FEMA during her co-presidency and calling for "restoration" of federal command and control. (Pat Sullivan AP photo)

Well, you know, that's what they always do. We've been living with that kind of rhetoric for the last 4 1/2 years . . . Every time anyone raises any kind of legitimate criticism and asks questions, they're attacked.

The Clinton Family Fantasy re FEMA's Golden Age goes like this, according to the WaPo:

She and her husband consider the performance of FEMA under James Lee
Witt, its former director and a fellow Arkansan, to be one of the true
success stories of the Clinton administration. The Clintons believe [It depends upon what your definition of "believe" is] the
agency has been degraded under Bush.

The Post appears to have bought her hubby's half of the spin whole hog:

Privately, Clinton has been incredulous [shocked, shocked?] over what he regards as the
administration's failure to grasp quickly the perilous situation
materializing in New Orleans, particularly for poor African Americans [begin violins and "Ron Brown's Body" fake but accurate tears].

During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, "Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage -- that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration."

Keep on dreamin', Hillary, and hope the great unwashed you're counting on for enough votes in 2008 doesn't find out that FEMA's performance during those halcyon days of yore, rather than "one of the true success stories of the Clinton administration" was just business as usual on the part of a bloated federal bureaucracy.

September 06, 2005

Again standing in for animals displaced by Katrina -- until we get some images from the folks at Animal Rescue League of Boston, now on the scene in Lafayette, Louisiana -- Baby assumes a waiting-to-be-rescued stance as he applies the think system to dislodge our sister (right) from his favorite chair at Goomp's during Labor Day festivities over the weekend.

The best way to assist in the disaster relief efforts is to make a donation to the organizations involved so that they can purchase much needed supplies and equipment for the rescue and relief efforts and provide assistance to animal welfare groups impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

Update:Conservative Cat hosts this week's Carnival of the Cats, "a non-political respite from the vehement echo chamber that the blogosphere spins intself into during the week." This cat may be on to something.

September 03, 2005

Tiny (foreground) as compassionate conservative? Her brother (Baby, background) doesn't think so, but Kevin Loy of the much-referenced The Irish Trojan Blog has other ideas. (Photo first published here.)

September 02, 2005

GW arrives in Mobile midday to board a helicopter that will fly him over the devastated remains of the Crescent City. Even as the President pledges to restore order, chaos of Third-World proportions reigns. FOXNews reporter Steve Harrigan: "I feel like I'm in an abandoned city where two sides are fighting it out. It's not very reassuring." Meanwhile, throughout the morning and early afternoon, waves of convoys -- National Guard troops, military personnel, firefighters and others -- stream into the city Cavalry style.

I have my issues with the way this was handled, but for now I’m keeping it to my self. None of this half assed Monday-morning quarterbacking is going to do a damn thing to get those people out of there, but the corrosive effect it will have on our government serves no one.

Stop looking for someone to blame, and start looking for a way to help.

Rebuild, perhaps, but can we -- will politics allow us to -- learn from our mistakes? Hurricanes will always taunt the Gulf Coast, and the Mississippi will rise every spring. If we would rebuild New Orleans, we must listen to the living history of natural systems. Or maybe we should listen to blogfriend Richard Lawrence Cohen, who paints a vision of New Orleans, 2025. Simulated reality trumps reality, and his future tourist, a youngster traveling with his family, takes it all in stride:

This is the greatest city! Our hotel room is on the 40th floor, right on Bourbon Street, and I can look down over the whole French Quarter and see what’s going on without even going down there. We have in-room VR, so this morning I put on the helmet and there I was, back in old New Orleans the way it was before this flood or something that they had about twenty years ago. It was okay, but it was small and dirty and nothing much interesting was happening, just a lot of people eating seafood and getting drunk and watching other people take off their clothes.

We think Richard's definitely onto something. They've already got stuff like that at the Grand Canyon, where most tourists just say no to the real-life adventure and relative discomfort of a muleride to the bottom, opting instead for the wide-screen video version in air-conditioned, couch-potato comfort at the top.

Our i-mail correspondent, an accomplished amateur animal behaviorist, pointed out the difference in body language between a flood-stranded cat like the one blogged here and a similarly dislocated dog like the one in the picture above:

In a way, I worry more for the dogs, than the cats. Did you see the face on that poor doggy? Contrast that to the face of the totally fed-up pood in one of your previous posts.

It's true. The dog is distraught, the cat, disgusted. Both can use a helping hand, though, and that's where organizations like our flood-relief charity of choice, the Animal Rescue League of Boston, come in. There's still plenty of time to make a donation and then register your participation in the blogosphere's "Blog for Relief Day" data base by logging in here.

So far -- as of about 8:10 p.m. EDT -- the effort has raised $106,572 in contributions for a variety of favorite-son charities. We're proud to have done our part by raising a respectable $275 from 5 sources, not all of them relatives. Could anything be more American -- not to mention blogorific in the "Invisible Hand" sense -- than for an aggregate of individual acts by a widely disparate group of people in friendly competition with each other, each vying for pride of place by attracting the most support to help the larger community, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts? It is truly a good thing.

Flood relief? What's that? Tiny doesn't watch TV and doesn't read blogs, but she didn't seem to mind standing in for all those flood-plagued furry friends being looked after by the fine folk of Animal Rescue League of Boston in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We'll post some pictures from the front -- Jackson, Mississippi is where they're at -- as soon as they come in.

The Animal Rescue League sent its lead manager, Nicholas Gilman, to Jackson ahead of the rescue team. His initial experience there was a long line waiting for gasoline, reminiscent of the gas shortages back in the early 1970s. Gilman related that ARL would serve two immediate and important roles in Jackson. The League will help run a temporary animal shelter established at the Jackson Fair Grounds -- the shelter is already caring for some 70 dogs and cats -- and serve on an assessment team to review conditions in Hattiesburg and Biloxi.

Jennie Taliaffero of The Greatest Jeneration, who already gave to the PetCo Katrina fund, sponsor of ARL of Boston's collaborator, the American Humane Association: "I may give some more to your Boston charity, too. Our 4-legged companions must be saved along with the people!"

When other nations are hit with calamity, whether it be terrorism or a natural disaster, it is the United States that comes to the rescue. The United States gave more than all other nations combined to the Tsunami relief efforts in Southeast Asia last December.

After the September 11 attacks, the Red Cross alone received over one billion dollars worth of contributions. The vast majority of funds came from individual Americans committed to helping our own. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that "America is great because America is good." This generosity is a reflection of that goodness.

And yes, I am trying to encourage some friendly competition here. Tomorrow [Thursday] morning I will be publishing "leader boards" which show which charities are receiving the most donations, and which bloggers have been most successful in encouraging their readers to donate. So get your readership fired up!

Besides
ourselves, we note early this morning already two bloggers new on our
cyberhorizon are promoting this blog's chosen charity, Animal Rescue League of Boston, blogged here Tuesday.

JT of Old Controller,
who describes himself as a "retired AF officer, wannabe writer. We have
five dogs and two cats, and feed every squirrel and bird within ten
miles."

Mark of South Puget Sound Libertarian,
among other things a vet of the Army Medical Corps during the Vietnam
war, who writes "Having been frightened and depressed by the seemingly
irresistible march of big government, I first decided simply to avoid
it all. But now I have re-engaged and started this web log. I'm having
fun . . . so far.

SECOND INSTALLMENT: Okay, I'm totally overwhelmed with "Katrina Flood Aid" emails -- there are hundreds and hundreds. I'm going to keep posting as the day goes on, but no fancy alphabetical order or clever comments. And I'm not repeatedly linking to the same charities; I'll just mention 'em. There are just too many!

Update: Thanks to Kitty of Kitty Litter for linking our original ARL Boston post: "I can't even think of what would happen to our beloved pets in a flood of this magnitude." Check out what happened to a herd of Suidae in this photo flashback from Hurricane Floyd flooding in 1999, linked by Kitty at Byrd Droppings.

August 30, 2005

We've found the focus of our hurricane relief efforts -- one of our longtime "pet" causes -- the Animal Rescue League of Boston. As part of a national network in collaboration with the American Humane Association, ARL Boston dispatched a team of four specialists in two vehicles from their Dedham facility this morning and headed for Nashville, where they will set up a base of operations and then move out from there to wherever they can do the most good in the coming days to deliver disaster relief to displaced animals. They will be joined tomorrow by Chief Operating Officer Nicholas Gilman, who reports:

The team is equipped to handle large and small animal rescue, floodwater and swiftwater rescue and to assist in transportation of large animals.

We've spoken with ARL Boston's Director of Communications, Tom Adams, who sent along some background material and has promised to keep us posted on the team's progress. They're taking along a digital camera loaned by local WHDH-TV, Channel 7 so we're hoping to get some images to post here in the coming days. Meantime, Tom invites our support:

We welcome donations to help with rescue efforts like our work aiding the animals affected by Hurricane Katrina. Donations may be made through our web site at www.arlboston.org; by phone to (617) 426-9170, Ext. 138 or by mail to